A Fruitless Conversation
by ShannonSto
Summary: Weekly Improv Fic. GS oriented.


**A/N**: My response to this week's Improv challenge at Unbound.  I came up a little short on the length.  As always, first and last lines are to be used as given. The rest is up to me.

**Disclaimer**: Suing me is a waste of time and effort. I own nothing. Ask my creditors.

*^*^*^*^*^*

"That's some swarm of mice."  Nick nodded in the direction of the rodent-bearing enclosure.

"One mouse is too many, Nicky," Catherine responded uneasily.

"I realize a snake's gotta eat too, but I still hate to think that's how most of these little guys are going to end up," Sara sighed.  "Can you imagine being swallowed alive?" She shuddered.

Catherine gave her a disbelieving glare. "Don't tell me you actually feel sorry for these rats."

"They're not rats, Catherine," Sara said.  She lifted the lid and the cage and picked up a mouse in her hand. "They're mice. They're cute."

"If you say so."

Nick reached into the cage and petted a couple of the rodents. "They are kind of soft."

Warrick weighed in on the conversation, trying to steer it back to the matter at hand. "What do you say, guys? Divide and conquer?"  A gangland shootout in a "superstore" would not be an easy scene to process.  Thankfully, the crime had occurred when the store had closed for the evening, so no innocent bystanders had been caught in the crossfire.  The gunmen had raced around the store, leaving a mess of destruction and bullet fragments in virtually every department.

"Sure," Sara replied, placing her little white friend back into his habitat. "I'll take the pet department."  It was amazing to her that none of the animals appeared to have been hit in the barrage of gunfire.

"I got sporting goods!" Nick volunteered to no one's surprise.

"I'll take housewares," Warrick said. "And Grissom's got the interviews going already."

Catherine picked up her kit. "Then I guess that means the grocery department's my bag."  Surveying the long aisles of foodstuffs, Catherine wondered how she had drawn the shortest straw.  The area was twice the size of anyone else's!

She worked with painstaking precision, carefully marking, photographing and bagging every potential fragment she encountered. Midway through the frozen foods, Catherine was relieved to hear Grissom's voice. "How far did you get?"

"I'm done with aisles six through twelve. One through five are still open territory."  Grissom broke open his field kit and settled in to work beside her.

As they worked their way across the store to the produce aisle, Catherine couldn't stop herself from voicing her observation.  "Fruits and veggies are all good, but I don't know how Sara can subsist on this stuff.  I gotta have my beef."

Grissom glanced over at her. "From a purely physiological standpoint, human beings can thrive on a diet that excludes red meat.  They just have to be careful to include other sources of protein."

Catherine eyed him with amusement. "Always the scientist, aren't you?"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you'll never come right out and say what you think.  You have to hide behind your books and your science."

"I'm not hiding, Catherine."  There was a slight warning tone to Grissom's voice, but Catherine knew him well enough to pay no heed.

"I gave you a perfectly good opening to talk about Sara, you know, something personal, and you immediately turned it back to being impersonal."

Grissom kept his tone even. "You made a personal observation for which there was a perfectly sound scientific explanation."

Undaunted, Catherine took a deep breath. "You can't hide from her forever, Gil.  More to the point, you can't hide from yourself forever."

"I'm not hiding from anything," he insisted irritably.

"Okay, okay," she surrendered. "But word to the wise: if you don't do something quick, she's going to be gone.  It'll be too late."

Too late. Oh how he had learned to hate those words. "Can we process the scene, Catherine? We have a very long night ahead of us."

She nodded to Grissom, then turned back to her work, picking bullet fragments out of the artichoke bin.  Noting that some of the vegetables had bullet holes in them, she knew she would have to collect them as evidence.  Gil Grissom was her friend, but she was certainly glad she wasn't in love with him.  He was really a tough nut to crack.  She wondered if he'd ever wake up and smell the coffee where his personal life was concerned. 

Catherine sighed as she bagged the artichokes.


End file.
